Re: [RFC PATCH 0/6] Keem Bay OCS ECC crypto driver

[Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 at 20:00, Alessandrelli, Daniele
<daniele.alessandrelli@intel.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ard,
>
> Thank you very much for your valuable feedback.
>
> On Mon, 2021-01-18 at 13:09 +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > This is rather unusual compared with how the crypto API is typically
> > used, but if this is really what you want to implement, you can do so
> > by:
> > - having a "ecdh" implementation that implements the entire range, and
> > uses a fallback for curves that it does not implement
> > - export the same implementation again as "ecdh" and with a known
> > driver name "ecdh-keembay-ocs", but with a slightly lower priority,
> > and in this case, return an error when the unimplemented curve is
> > requested.
> >
> > That way, you fully adhere to the API, by providing implementations of
> > all curves by default. And if a user requests "ecdh-keembay-ocs"
> > explicitly, it will not be able to use the P192 curve inadvertently.
>
> I tried to implement this, but it looks like the driver name is
> mandatory, so I specified one also for the first implementation.
>
> Basically I defined two 'struct kpp_alg' variables; both with cra_name
> = "ecdh", but with different 'cra_driver_name' (one with
> cra_driver_name = "ecdh-keembay-ocs-fallback" and the other one with
> cra_driver_name = "ecdh-keembay-ocs").
>
> Is this what you were suggesting?
>
> Anyway, that works (i.e., 'ecdh-keembay-ocs' returns an error when the
> unimplemented curve is requested; while 'ecdh-keembay-ocs' and 'ecdh'
> work fine with any curve), but I have to set the priority of 'ecdh-
> keembay-ocs' to something lower than the 'ecdh_generic' priority.
> Otherwise the implementation with fallback ends up using my "ecdh-
> keembay-ocs" as fallback (so it ends up using a fallback that still
> does not support the P-192 curve).
>
> Also, the implementation without fallback is still failing crypto self-
> tests (as expected I guess).
>
> Therefore, I tried with a slightly different solution. Still two
> implementations, but with different cra_names (one with cra_name =
> "ecdh" and the other one with cra_name = "ecdh-keembay"). This solution
> seems to be working, since, the "ecdh-keembay" is not tested by the
> self tests and is not picked up as fallback for "ecdh" (since, if I
> understand it correctly, it's like if I'm defining a new kind of kpp
> algorithm), but it's still picked when calling crypto_alloc_kpp("ecdh-
> keembay").
>
> Does this second solution looks okay to you? Or does it have some
> pitfall that I'm missing?
>

You should set the CRYPTO_ALG_NEED_FALLBACK flag on both
implementations, to ensure that neither of them are considered as
fallbacks themselves.